The torpedo split in three. Three slender torpedoes flapped laz toward them, showing small lateral fins and violent-orange bellies.

male and a female, forever mated, plus a single juvenile who would ~ on body mass fast, then mature more slowly. They divided only to ht or fight. The Triune Squad itself was named for the triune famil:

interdependence.

The juvenile would be the smallest, the one hanging back a little. T~ adults swept forward.

"Aim for the male," Smitta said and loosed, the line trailing c behind the arrow. Which was male? Minya waited a moment to jud Smitta's target, then loosed her own weapon. She judged that U, weren't in range yet . . . and she was right; the male's body rippi him free of the arrows' paths, while the female bored in. Sal had hi back. Now she loosed, and the veering female caught an arrow in 1 fin.

She bellowed. She flapped once, and the arrow snapped free.

appeared from the smoke, yanked into the sky. It didn't seem to boti her as she reeled in, her ancient metal bow slung safe over her should The smoldering old-man's-hair had been left on the female's tail, a she was flapping madly.

Smitta sent a tethered arrow winging at the juvenile.

Both adults screamed. The female tried to block the arrow. Too sb The juvenile didn't seem to see the arrow coming. Smitta yanked at I line and stopped it a meter short.

The female gaped.

The women were reeling frantically, but it wasn't necessary. I adults moved in alongside the infant, inilnitely graceful. Small has reached out from their orange bellies to pull them together. Tb moved away like a single blurred blue ghost against the blue sky.

"See? They're smart. You can reason with them," Smitta said.

Sal pulled a teardrop-shaped jet pod from one of the cluster of po eta that ran down and across the front of her tunic. She twisted the t A cloud of seeds and mist spurted away from her, thrusting Sal be toward the bark.

She coiled line and stowed her weapons, including the valuable be Springy met4, it was, handed down from old to young within the 'I

une Squad for at least two hundred years. "Will done, troops, but I think the fire is getting to the wood. I wish Thanya would get here. She

couldn't have missed us, could she?"

To Minya's eye, the fire might have reached wood by now, or not.

Hard to tell where old-man's-hair shaded over into rotted wood. "It's

not bad yet," she said.

"I hate to waste jet pods, but . . . treefodder. I want to look for

them," Sal decided. She gathered her legs under her, hands gripping the

bark to brace herself, and jumped. She waved her arms to~p herself around until she could see the trunk. They watched her drift along the trunk, out toward Dalton-Quinn Tuft.

"She worries too much," Smitta said.

Seventy days had passed since Clave's citizens had departed Quinn Tuft.